Saturday, November 05, 2005

The National Palace

Took a work-sponsored trip to the National Palace yesterday. It's a fairly interesting building, with murals in the main entryways depicting the blending of Mayan and Spanish cultures. There are two "main entrances," each with a big mural. One of them shows a Mayan princess marrying a guy in a conquistador get-up, and below them a mestizo or ladino guy working with a motor -- symbolizing technology and progress and such. Just so you don't go away thinking that the Mayan people are all convinced their relations with the Spanish were all sunshine and lollipops, the other mural shows the Spanish army kicking buts and taking names in battle with the Mayans. It's also pretty cool to see gold-leafed ceilings and chandeliers in the national palace of a country with about a 75% poverty rate.

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Guatemala? Rio de Janeiro? Huh?

This journal once chronicled the experience of a low-level American diplomat living in Guatemala. Then he went to Latvia, and Afghanistan, and then back "home" to Washington, DC for a bit. He is now serving in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. If you are one of the few people of no blood relation to the authors who has come here in search of Guatemalan content, here are a few choices from the archives that we like:

In Afghanistan, the photographic opportunities were often limited to what we could sneak with a point-and-shoot camera out the bulletproof window of a speeding SUV. But sometimes we got out and about. A few favorites from that tour:

We've also vacationed aggressively in each region we've been posted in, and taken some epic home leave trips, usually leading to better photos than those where we were posted. Those photos are included in the blog, but somehow holiday snaps seem beneath this sidebar.